Networks provide the basis for a wide variety of services for many different devices and users. Providers strive to make data and information accessible to users from all network-accessible locations. Traditionally, data access involves some level of latency where the data is posted or stored at one location and which can be accessed by the user at a later time. E-mail is such an example where communications latency occurs by the messages being sent through a network of mailers and servers until the recipient downloads and reads the message.
However, rather than use realtime infrastructures such a telephone systems with limited interactive capabilities, businesses and users alike are demanding more effective and efficient realtime IP communications methodologies. A rapidly evolving technology is online collaboration where computing systems access IP-based services for multi-client interaction. Here, users can interact using not only voice, but many other types of multimedia such as text, graphics, images, and video.
In a multi-party realtime application such as online collaboration it is common for several parties to rendezvous on a common resource (e.g., network service) selected from a pool of resources. However, what typically occurs is that the utility of the service is realized by the users and demand begins to outstrip the available support and resources. Growth can be managed by limiting the number and type of users, for example. However, this can become costly in terms of human, as well as software and hardware management. Ideally, as the number of users fluctuates, the resources supporting the service should scale to the demand. Moreover, as users take advantage of the services by connecting and disconnecting, the pool of resources supporting the services should, ideally, expand and contract without disrupting other connected users, but more practically, not disrupt more than a small percentage of the overall user population, if any users at all.
Web-based access is becoming widely accepted as a preferred means for accessing services. In a web-based service application, it is common for many of the users to be restricted to making outbound HTTP (hypertext markup language) connections. When using a web service with a database backend the users can communicate and coordinate access using polling, but this introduces unnecessary traffic and delays as the user polls for changes. Conventional web-based systems lack mechanisms for providing efficient realtime intercommunications for clients.